The Gecko’s ability to climb walls and ceilings captures the imagination of many design and engineering students (it certainly did when I was studying) but most get no further than daydreaming about using this impressive skill at human scale. It’s the scaling up that’s prevented most people from getting anywhere with it. Not Elliot Hawkes though. The mechanical engineering graduate student has made his spiderman dreams come true and scaled the glass walls of one of the buildings on the Stanford campus using Gecko pads on his hands and feet. The trick to scaling up is to distribute the force equally across the pads and use minimal energy to switch the pads ‘on’ and ‘off’. Further details on how they achieved this on the Standford News page below.
Website link: Stanford News – Stanford engineers climb walls using gecko-inspired climbing device, 21st November 2014